


Break My Skin Apart

by Akiko_Natsuko



Series: Reaper76 [67]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Body Horror, Broken Promises, Emotional Hurt, Heavy Angst, Human Experimentation, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Immortality, Longing for Death, Love/Hate, M/M, Memories, Promises, Revenge, Science Experiments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2020-12-17 14:37:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21056045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akiko_Natsuko/pseuds/Akiko_Natsuko
Summary: 'When their final fight ends in an unexpected way, Jack finds himself cursed with existence that he never wanted. An existence dependent on the very man who ended his life.'Jack had promised Reaper that he was always his, as though he'd had a choice in saying the words. However, with answers in his grasp, its a promise on the verge of being broken, along with the body and existence that Reaper had given him.





	1. Hope

_ Stay with me, forever_ _, Gabe had whispered those words in his ear the day the Omnic Crisis had been declared over, and naively, Jack had nodded, promising something that they’d both known wasn’t possible. How far they had fallen, he thought bitterly, feeling Reaper’s claws biting into the tender flesh of his neck, forcing his attention back to the present. “One day we’ll be free Jack, but only if we can go together. Remember that.” Numbly Jack nodded, knowing that there was no other choice, that there was no other path for him as long as Reaper was alive. A terrible smile appeared on Reaper’s face before he leant in and claimed Jack’s lips in a rough kiss, it was full of teeth and a fire born of anger rather than love, and when they parted Jack could taste blood on his lips and feel the tingle of the nanites rushing to repair the latest damage. “Mine. Forever.”_

_ Reaper was staring at him he realised belatedly, the look in his eyes demanding a response, his nanites beginning to burn when he hesitated and Jack slumped, defeated, unable to hold the crimson gaze as he whispered his agreement._

_“Always.”_

_It was a bitter promise._

****

The promise echoed in the back of his mind as he pressed forward, and Jack couldn’t stop himself from glancing around, half expecting to find Reaper looming out of the shadows, ready to ensure that he kept his word. However, there was nothing there, and he huffed a laugh under his breath as he turned his attention back to the corridor ahead, and the holo-map that Athena had brought up for him. _I’m seeing ghosts now._ Still, the doubts lingered, and he could feel the nanites shifting and stirring. Could they tell that he was breaking his word? Could they bring Gabriel…Reaper here? It was a terrifying thought, even though it had been a couple of months since had last seen the other man, and the hand that wasn’t holding the map slipped to the darts he now carried at his belt.

His prize.

His secret weapon.

His greatest and last hope.

It had taken him days to recover from the drug that had shredded his nanites, and Reaper’s less than tender efforts to ‘save’ him, and when he had finally got back on his feet, the other man was gone and the data he had gathered had been wiped from Athena’s memory. But Jack hadn’t forgotten. He couldn’t forget what he’d seen, the soldiers he’d thought, the woman he had been too late to save. The fact that somewhere out there, people were working on a way to destroy Reaper. To destroy him. Part of him knew that eventually when it was ready and Reaper was done with him, this hellish existence would end, but he wasn’t willing to wait. He had made that promise, even if it had been forced from his lips, and some tiny, twisted part of him wanted to keep it. Needed to keep it. To do something right, and yet…he wanted to be free. Ached for it.

So, he had gone back. He had tracked down some of the darts that held the poison, keeping them close, hoping that somewhere, someone would be able to at least replicate it, if not complete it. Which was why he was here in a remote Talon base, chasing answers that could get him killed.

That he prayed would get him killed.

He had hidden his efforts, his search for the information that had led him here, in a flurry of attacks on other Talon interests, hoping to keep Reaper off his trail, and so far, it seemed to have worked. But Gabriel had always known him better than anyone, and even if Jack had managed to pull the wool over his eyes, for the time being, he knew that it wouldn’t last forever and that this might be his only chance. If the answers weren’t here, and Reaper found him. He shuddered, easily able to imagine how short his leash would be if that happened, breath speeding up as he felt the echo of claws against his skin, the nanites burning beneath his skin. A warning, and a plea for him to turn back before it was too long, and he took a deep breath, pressing a hand to his chest, before pushing through it. He couldn’t stop now, not when the possibility of freedom was within his reach.

He turned another corner, and there was a noise overhead, before the lights flickered to life, flooding the corridor ahead and leaving him blind for a moment, until he managed to flip his visor up with a curse, blinking hard to clear his vision. “What the…Athena?!” He demanded in alarm as the holo-map flickered and disappeared, tapping the device, but while the light that showed she was still on was blue, there was no response. “Athena?”

“You don’t need that map anymore.” For a wild, terrifying moment he thought that Reaper had found him, and his rifle was up and ready to fire before it dawned on him that he hadn’t recognised the voice. And that it was a woman, the lilting accent tugging at his memory, although he couldn’t place it. “The door is up ahead.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m disappointed Strike Commander.” He stiffened at the title from a different lifetime, fingers tensing against the trigger, but there was no one in sight, and as he scanned the ceiling, he finally spotted the speakers embedded just behind the lights. “I would have thought that with those nanites of yours, you would have remembered me?” Now that she had drawn attention to it, Jack realised that his nanites were practically vibrating beneath his skin, an angry buzzing seeming to emanate from every inch of his body, and his mouth went dry.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Why don’t you come and find out?” It was a challenge, he could hear the amusement in the words, and he growled under his breath, glancing behind him. “Of course, you are welcome to walk away. But then you won’t get your answers, and Reaper will find out exactly where you have been and what you were looking for.”

He hated the terror the hinted threat caused, but he couldn’t deny it, even to call her bluff and with a muttered curse he turned back and stalked up the corridor. While the rest of the base had given off a feeling of disrepair and disuse, there was life in this bit, the corridor he was following a bleak, sterile metal tunnel that turned several times before he finally spotted the double doors at the end, lights shining through the windows. There were a couple of other doors leading off before it, and he spared them a passing glance, before pressing on, feeling the building vibrating, power whirring overhead and somewhere off to his left, as though everything had been funnelled into this one location. _It’s here,_ he thought, just wishing that he knew exactly what he was walking towards.

He peered through the glass in the door, a tendril of remembered dread creeping down his spine as he took in the lab that lay behind. It reminded him of the SEP labs, all sterile surfaces and too bright lights, and too many machines that he didn’t know the purpose of, surrounding a single, black leather chair and the urge to bolt was almost overwhelming. In fact, it was so strong that he could almost feel himself beginning to disintegrate, his nanites as keen to escape as he was, and it was that more than anything else that made him reach out and grasp the door handle with smoky fingers. The door opened easily, and he stepped inside, gun at the ready and eyes darting around for some sign of the owner of the voice, as he tried to hold his body together.

“Strike Commander Jack Morrison.” He whirled around as the voice came, louder this time, only to find himself staring at the door. “Or, is it Soldier 76 these days?” Something brushed against his shoulder and he lashed out, swiping through thin air, and there was another flash of fear as he caught a flicker of black smoke out of the corner of his eye. _Reaper?!_ But no, the nanites were buzzing again, but not in the way they did when their master was nearby, and as though to echo that thought the voice came again, filled with mocking laughter. “Or, maybe even…the Reaper’s prize? Or should that be his pet?”

Feet touched the ground behind him, and he turned around, to find a familiar figure stood there as though she had always been there, and his stomach twisted itself in a complicated knot, as he met her too-knowing, mismatched eyes.

“Moira…”

“You do remember me,” she smiled, and there was danger in that smile. “I’m flattered.” He snorted at that. She had always been like this, he could still remember the meeting which had led to her dismissal, even then, with the weight of public attention and disapproval coming down on her, and the threat of losing everything, she had been supremely confident and dismissive of their threats and warnings. It was clear that she remembered that encounter too, it was written across her expression as she began to circle around him, and even though he was the one holding a rifle, he felt like prey as he turned to match her position earning a chuckle before she asked. “So, what brings the former Strike Commander to my humble lab?” It was a well-aimed barb, and he winced, even as he slowly forced himself to lower the gun.

“This.” Praying that he wasn’t making a huge mistake, he reached for the darts, pulling one out and holding it out to her. It was barely perceptible, but he caught the way her lips twitched as she reached out to touch it, too long nails scraping over his palm, blood pearling along the line before the nanites sprang into action, searing the cut shut. “You…”

“I was curious,” she shrugged, unapologetic even as she watched the wound heal completely, before turning her attention to the dart he had passed her, holding it up to the light which gave the liquid inside an eerie glow. “So, you were the one that destroyed that lab.”

“You…don’t sound too displeased about that,” Jack noted, finally lowering the gun completely. He didn’t trust her an inch, but he also knew that threats were unlikely to work on her. However, he couldn’t ignore the fact that she had sounded almost smug about the fact that he had destroyed the other lab.

“They were amateurs,” Moira glanced at him, before turning away and stalking towards one of the tables, before turning and beckoning for him to follow. Not knowing what else to do Jack obeyed, trying not to feel as though he was walking straight into a trap. “They took part of my work, thinking that they could improve on it.” She gestured, and Jack sidestepped and immediately froze. He recognised the neat lines of vials in the fridge, even if several of them hadn’t had old SEP labels on them, and his gaze slowly slipped down to the bottom row, feeling his nanites growing more and more agitated, as he watched the fluid in them shift and stir from the nanites within. “As though they could do anything with it, that hadn’t already been done.”

It took a moment for the words to register, and Jack’s head jerked up. “You’ve already found a way to destroy the nanites.” He hated how hopeful he sounded. How desperate, but he couldn’t help it. Hope, something that he hadn’t felt in a very long time bubbling up, right until she shook her head, twirling the dart between her fingers.

“This,” she held it up, before tossing it carelessly onto the desk. “Was built on a prototype that went missing from my lab. Considering there was only one person who would have the need to take such a thing, I saw little point in continuing my efforts. If he wanted to seek help elsewhere, who was I to stop him.”

“You’re lying.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re lying,” Jack repeated. He had been caught off guard by the implication that Gabriel had sought help elsewhere, especially after learning that all those clandestine trips that Gabriel had refused to give an explanation for during his time in Blackwatch, particularly during the last months, had been to see this woman. To find an answer for what had been done to him. Hell, she had probably been the one to give him the information that had allowed him to ‘save’ Jack, a thought that nearly had him lashing out, especially when he caught her studying him, recognising the look in her eyes. To her, he was nothing more than a specimen. Then, the rest of what she was saying had registered, and he knew with a certainty that scared him – because it fed into his hope – that she was lying. She was scoffing at his words, straightening up to her full height, and he stepped forward, pushing into her space. “I remember what you were like. You refused to give up, even when it meant risking everything. So, you wouldn’t give up just because Gabriel had crossed you if only so you could hold what he wanted over his head later on.”

“And what does Gabriel Reyes want.”

“To die. To be free,” Jack whispered. She already knew the answer, it was written across her face. What he wasn’t prepared for was Moira reaching out, nails brushing his cheek, leaving blood tracks that barely lasted a second.

“And what do you want?”

_ The same,_ the words were nearly out before he stopped himself. It was true. The need to end this cursed existence burning brighter than ever, fanned by the hope that he couldn’t hold back. But it wasn’t the only thing that he wanted. _One day we’ll be free Jack, but only if we can go together. Remember that…Mine. Forever._ He lifted his head, meeting her gaze without hesitation. “I want to leave him behind. I want to be free of him.” Her eyes lit up at his word, the hand still resting against his cheek turning almost gentle as she patted him.

“Well, then…maybe I could help you,” she whispered turning away, and he could practically see the calculations whirling through her mind, but then she paused and glanced at him. “It won’t be without cost though.” There were a warning and a threat in those words. She was offering him a deal with the devil, on terms that he didn’t know. But it was a choice, he was being given a choice, something that Gabriel… Reaper had taken from him from the moment that he had first forced his nanites into him, and it was that more than any real trust in Moira that made up his mind.

“I don’t care what the cost is,” he said, letting his pulse rifle clatter the ground beside him as he spread his arms in supplication. “Do your worst.”

“Oh, I will.”


	2. Broken

_It won’t be without cost…_

Moira had warned him that what he wanted was going to cost him, and he had been so swept up by the almost forgotten feeling of hope, and the promise of freedom that he had agreed. Certain that he could withstand anything that she might throw at him, and willing to do almost anything if it would let him escape this hell. If it would let be free of Gabriel. After all, he had already been called a monster, how much worse could it get? Not that he thought it would come to that, because it was clear that Moira was hidden here, the rest of the base just a protective shell, meant to discourage anyone from venturing in far enough to find her lab, and he doubted she would risk that. Which meant that the cost would be something else, something more contained, and being familiar with her past work and remembering the agony that had blurred his time with SEP he had braced himself for pain.

It wasn’t enough.

The first few days had been easy enough. He had spent most of his time in the examination chair as she conducted a battery of tests, taking blood, measuring his heart rate, timing his healing rate. When he had grumbled that he wasn’t there for a medical, she had pointed out that he wasn’t supposed to exist. He wasn’t like Gabriel or the other soldiers created from SEP and her research, he was abnormality created by Reaper’s inability to let him go, and if he wanted her to help then she had to have a baseline. That, and the threat that she could just go back to her other research, something to do with nanites, and the swirling purplish light that would sometimes sweep around her left hand, that had him shivering and uneasy about who he had made a deal with, had made him subside.

He’d tried to pay attention, to learn exactly what had been done to his body, realising that he still didn’t understand most of it. At the time he had been too horrified to ask, and afterwards, he had tried his best to forget about what had been done to him, and what he had become. The horror returned, and he had barely lasted an afternoon, before he started to let his thoughts drift, trying to focus on anything but what she was doing, and the words she would mutter under her breath. Unfortunately, the situation and the lab meant that his thoughts ended up drifting back to Overwatch, and even back to SEP…back to happier times…

_“Just kill me,” Jack groaned as he rolled onto his back, desperately trying to find a comfortable position on the bunk that was increasingly too small for his growing frame. It felt like thousands of tiny fire ants were at work under his skin, the pain coming in waves, cresting as he moved, and then settling for a moment, a constant, inescapable burn. It had been like this since the last injection three days before, and he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, barely able to keep down the water that his roommate kept forcing down his throat, and he was reaching the end of his tether. It wasn’t the worst pain he’d endured since joining SEP, but it was torturous and unrelenting, and he just wanted it to end._

_ The bed dipping beside him had him blinking, opening eyes that he couldn’t remember closing, the world blurry, but not enough to stop him recognising Gabriel as the other man perched on the edge of the bed. “Kill me,” he pleaded again._

_“Not a chance,” Gabriel sounded torn between amusement and sympathy, and Jack snarled a curse at him, hating that the other man had sailed through the last round of injections with nothing but a migraine that had lasted for the first twenty-four hours. “Here.” Something cold and wet was draped over his forehead, and Jack groaned as it beat back a little bit of the heat, nearly missing the fingers that combed through his sweat-soaked hair. “You’ve just got to ride it out a little while longer, the doctors said it shouldn’t last more than another day.” Jack wept at that, the thought of enduring another minute let alone a day more than he could bear, and Gabriel shushed him, murmuring reassurances, even as he began to place more cold clothes across Jack’s body, promising him that he wasn’t going anywhere._

“Gabe!” Jack jolted upright in the chair, caught between memory and sleep, lashing out as he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, and there was a crash as Moira lunged back out of reach, dropping whatever she had been carrying. “What the…?” He trailed off, his mind catching up with where he was as he glanced around, trying to bury aching longing that the memory had dredged up. That Gabriel was long gone. Dead long before Zurich had dropped on their heads, and Reaper certainly wasn’t going to come and hold his hand and tell him that things would be okay. He was alone here. Moira wasn’t his ally, glaring daggers at him as she rescued what she could from what she had dropped, and he sighed, drawing his arm back. “Sorry.”

“Just be glad that it wasn’t anything irreplaceable,” Moira snapped, not accepting the apology as she turned away, and he let his head fall back against the chair. _Why? Why did he have to remember how things had been? _It made him want impossible things. It made him wonder if he should wait for Reaper if Moira even managed to find a way to destroy him…them. _No._ The leather arms creaked as he gripped them, forcing himself to remember how it had felt when Gabriel had brought him back, the cruelty of his last words, the promise that had been forced from him, desperately trying to find the anger that had led to him agreeing to this.

It took him a few minutes to realise that the wires and machines that he had been hooked up to were gone, and he blinked and lifted his head, realising that there was nothing attached to him now. “Are you finished….?”

“With stage one,” Moira glanced up at him, her irritation melting away beneath an almost unholy excitement, and Jack shifted, his earlier reservations returning tenfold. He knew what she was capable of, hell, he only had to look at Reaper and by extension himself to know what she could do, and yet it was precisely that which made her his best chance. “You should get some rest, tomorrow is going to be hard on you, and once I start there will be no stopping.” He wasn’t given chance to ask what she made by that, because she had finished tidying, and with a last smile, that didn’t reach her eyes and did nothing to settle his nerves she turned and headed to the far door without a backwards look.

Leaving him alone with his questions and doubts, and in the lab that had far too many memories threatening to bubble up. He hadn’t asked about other quarters though, and some part of him was terrified that if he ventured out of this place then Reaper would find him and stop him. Instead, he pushed himself up out of the chair. It might be the most comfortable place in the lab, but it made him uneasy and considering her words, he had a feeling that he was soon going to have very unpleasant memories to associate with it. Instead, he moved across to the one stretch of wall that had no equipment against it, pressing his back to it and sliding down to the ground, glancing across at where his pulse rifle was leant against a cupboard. He wasn’t sure if leaving it there was a sign of trust, on both their parts, as he had fully expected it to have vanished after that first night, and his fingers twitched, missing the comforting weight, but he made no effort to retrieve it.

After tomorrow there would be no going back. He had no idea what she had planned, but he trusted her when she said that she wouldn’t stop because it had been said with the same fervency that she had told him and the committee that she wouldn’t let their hesitation curtail her research. As soon as he sat in that chair tomorrow, she would own him. Right now, he could still walk away. He could get his rifle and slip away into the night, pretend that this had never happened and hope that Reaper never realised what he had attempted. He didn’t move. He still ached for the Gabriel in his memory, but it had dimmed, dulled by the memory of what Reaper had done to him. The knowledge of what he would do to him if he discovered what Jack was attempting.

_There’s no going back now._

****

Moira had roused him early the next morning, not that he’d slept much. Whether it was his own nervousness, or something else, his nanites had been awake all night, constantly shifting under his skin and more than once he had almost lost form, and it had made sleep almost impossible. Not least because he had been terrified that it meant that Reaper was close, and he had spent most of the night with his eyes on the doors, waiting to see the smoke materialise. And when he had managed to close his eyes for more than a moment or two at a time, the nightmares had come, past and present blurring together, until everything was twisted together. To the point that it had almost been a relief when she had roused him, ordering him to strip down to his boxers and sit in the chair, not giving him time to ask questions or second guess himself.

As soon as he was settled on the chair she was there, drawing the restraints that he had been ignoring until now around him, and for a moment he had tensed. It went against every instinct he had to let himself be tied down, let alone when it involved putting himself at her mercy. She arched an eyebrow at him, waiting impatiently, and he clenched his hands as he forced himself not to fight her, taking slow, deep breaths as she finished strapping him down. He tested them once she was done, aware that she was watching him, not sure whether he was relieved or worried when he realised, they were reinforced, no doubt built with someone like him in mind. _Or someone like Gabriel,_ he thought bitterly, slumping back against the chair and nodding at her. Nothing she could do to him could compare to the pain of those memories, that loss, at least that was what he thought, as he watched her fill a needle from one of the vials he had noticed previously, and barely feeling it, as she injected it into his arm.

Then the pain came.

Jack had almost forgotten how much it had hurt when he had been hit by whatever drug they’d had in those darts, or rather he had willfully forgotten. This was worse. It had taken a minute for that to build from an ache to a burn, and then to agony. This time, he seemed to have barely taken a breath, before his entire body seizes, every single nanite that shifted beneath his skin becoming a burning ember in a single second, leaving him caught in the centre of an inferno. He howled, trying to escape as he arched up, only to come up against the restraints, and in desperation he flung himself against them, hearing the chair creak in protest. They didn’t give. And the press of material against his overheated skin, felt like he was bursting apart.

No, he was bursting apart.

Just like back then, his body was trying to come undone as the nanites burned and convulsed under his skin, and the air around him was hazy with wisps of smoke. He tried to hold himself together, biting down on his tongue hard enough to draw blood, anything to find a sensation that would ground him. Blood filled his mouth, and he gagged on it, but it wasn’t enough. He was coming undone. Shrieking, fighting the restraints, trying to tear at his skin even as he tried to hold all together. _Let me die! Let me die!_ He wouldn’t though, or maybe he would because there was no Reaper here to save him this time, no ‘saviour’ waiting to force his body back together, and as he let go, his shriek became a wild laugh as he fell apart.

Burning.

Writhing.

Undone, but not undone.

He was still shrieking, his nanites crying out along with him, and he was mist and smoke, with fleeting patches of burning flesh. But he wasn’t fading away, his form remaining loosely human-shaped, still constrained by the chair.

He wasn’t dying.

That thought broke through the haze of agony, bringing a pain of its own, and he swirled in confusion. His form contorting and bulging, monstrous and incorporeal, but trapped. He was trapped. Stuck in this halfway existence. Panic followed. The pain ramping up again as he arched up, trying to break free. If he could just float free and come apart completely then maybe this would be over. The inferno returned, pain vibrating through every nanite, intensifying, reaching a crescendo.

And then something touched him.

At first, it was an almost feathery touch, like a finger running down his spine. Only he had no physical form, and this touch was everywhere at once, nanites freezing in place, as whatever it was brushed over them until it felt like he was splitting apart in a whole new way. Half of him locked in place, trapped by the touch, the other vibrating apart. It was an agony of a different sort. And then the touch tightened. He felt it this time, fingers wrapping around a handful of nanites, holding them. Cool skin, against burning nanites, burning him in a whole new way and he screamed. The noise echoing around him, bouncing from nanite to nanite, and somewhere in the distance he heard a laugh, and the grip tightened, and he thrashed against it, mist and smoke with nowhere to go.

_ Please. Please stop…_ He was splintering, shattering, his mind beginning to fracture. He forgot why he was here, what the purpose of this was. There was pain, and laughter, and his own breaking voice…and the fire that wouldn’t consume him, even as it ripped through every inch of him.

_Please…_

**

At some point, he had passed out. Or, he had hoped that he had died, as oblivion had finally granted him release from the agony griping him. However, consciousness had crept back to him, and with it the crushing weight of being alive, and a deep, resonating pain that seemed to swell with each other steady breath that he took. A sob rose and caught in his throat, igniting flames, and letting him taste the copper in his mouth, and he blinked, realising that he was solid again. His vision was blurry when he blinked again, but that didn’t stop him from recognising Moira as she leant over him. “Fascinating, you truly are fascinating and what Gabriel did…” It took a moment for the words to register, and another for his mind to make sense of them, an awful, sick feeling settling in the pit of his stomach as he realised that she almost sounded awed. As though what Reaper had done to him was a marvel, rather than torture, and he snarled her.

“…was cruel,” he spat or tried to, but all that came out was a broken, wheezing sound that couldn’t even be recognised as a human voice, and he flinched as the effort ignited a fire in his throat.

“Oh yes, I wouldn’t advise speaking,” Moira smirked at him, unrepentant in the face of his pain. “It took you rather a long time to succumb, and you were rather noisy in the meantime.” As though his pain was nothing more than an inconvenience. “Don’t look at me like that Strike Commander, you knew exactly what you were getting into.” He couldn’t argue with that, he had known. Or at least he had convinced himself that he knew what he was walking into, but as he lay there, feeling as weak as a newborn kitten, hurting in a way he had never thought possible, he realised he had been lying to himself. “It was worth it though.” His eyes shot back to her at that, and he managed to make a questioning noise in the back of his throat.

Moira turned away, picking up something he couldn’t see, and he tried to push himself up, realising a split second later than not only was he still restrained, but that moving was a terrible idea. White noise filled his head, a roar that threatened to pull him away, but he clung to the fact that she had found something, that he was a least a step closer, and eventually the sound eased, and his vision cleared enough to see the specimen jar she was waving at him. He blinked, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, stomach-churning unpleasantly as he watched what was undoubtedly part of his body, raw, red flesh livid against the glass, and speckled with black dots that almost looked like pepper. However, as he watched, unable to look away even as he fought the urge to baulk, the dots spread out, wisps of smoke rising in their wake, and the flesh seemed to disintegrate before his eyes. The nanites – and he could distantly feel them now, as though they weren’t quite his, finished their meal and then seemed to dissipate until the jar was empty. “Beautiful…”

“B…what…?” He managed to force out.

“The compound in those darts was designed to seize control of the nanites in the body, and turn them against the rest of the body,” Moira waved the jar, and then gestured at his body and Jack tilted his head, lacking the strength to lift it completely and glanced down, mouth going dry as he stared at the raw, bloody wound on his stomach. The wound was lined with black, and now he was aware of it, he could feel the nanites buzzing around the edge of it, seemingly at a loss as they found themselves unable to cross the edges and heal it. “And it works quite well over a small area. Nowhere near strong enough to destroy someone like you or Gabriel of course, but a surprisingly good attempt. With enough time, I suppose it might even destroy enough of your body that you would die, but it would take a long time, and it would be rather…inelegant.”

_Inelegant? _As though there was anything elegant about death. Jack had seen it in all its forms, and there was rarely anything elegant or peaceful about death, at least in his experience. However, as he glanced at the wound and then the jar he shuddered, unable to imagine what it would be like to die like that, to endure all that over and over, as it slowly shredded his body. And there was no certainty that it would be enough. It could all be for nothing.

“Can…do better…?” He asked, forcing the words out as he lifted his gaze to meet hers. He’d had a taste now of the cost, and he knew that with that question, and the smile that greeted it, he had just signed up for more. But he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how that tiny patch of flesh had been destroyed, fading completely from existence. If he could have that. If she could give him that release, then he could bear it.

“Of course,” she sounded offended at the question. “But it will take some time, and it will hurt. Your body will need to break again and again, as many times as it takes, and each time will be worse. And I can’t guarantee for sure, that I will find what you want. Of course, if I don’t, we can always return to this, and tear you apart a piece at a time.” _What did you ever see in her Gabe?_ Jack thought, because there was glee behind the scientific curiosity, as though she was relishing the thought of what was to come, and he wondered if she would feel the same if she knew what it had felt like. Probably, he realised after a moment, having caught brief glimpses of where she had clearly experimented on herself, and bizarrely that made him feel better and closed his eyes as he nodded.

“Do it.”


	3. Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note, I upped the rating on the fic primarily because this chapter got a lot darker than I had planned, so please check the tags etc and read at your own discretion.

SEP had torn him apart and rebuilt him from the ground up.

Overwatch. The Fall. Losing Gabriel. That had shattered him, and he’d stitched himself together again.

Gabriel. No, Reaper had killed him. Destroyed him. And then rebuilt him in his own monstrous image, ruining him in a way that Jack could never have imagined.

Moira broke him.

Again, and again and again.

In the past the only thing that had ever been enough to make him lose track of the passing of time had been when Reaper was ‘saving him’, but it didn’t take long for Jack to forget all about measuring how long he had been down in the lab. The world beyond those blank, lifeless walls, and the chair that he crawled into willingly at first until he was no longer even capable of leaving it, slowly becoming a distant memory, a dream of a different life. A mockery of life. Because his life was this now, the endless repeat of splintering, shattering…breaking down to nothing, and then creeping and crawling back together within the embrace of that chair. Time had no meaning here in this place, where he couldn’t even hold onto any sense of his self, no longer sure what was his body and was the parts of him that Moira had taken for her own, trapped in vials and slides around the rooms. Splinters of the monster he had become, pieces of his body that always fought to seep back to him, a high-pitched shriek in the back of his mind that he could never escape.

There had been times back during SEP and his time with the Strike Team and Overwatch when he had almost missed what it was like to feel the full extent of pain. His body healing so fast, that all but the most severe injuries had barely registered before he had begun to knit himself back together. Now, he would give anything to go back there.

To feel nothing.

Because he felt every second of it.

The stretching of his limbs, muscles and ligaments forced to their extreme and beyond, until he slumped like a broken marionette, delirious from the pain, high on the hope that somewhere in this agony he would get the answer he needed. Watching through blurring eyes as Moira worked around him, her gaze hungry in a way that would have disturbed him if he had been able to think of anything but the awful, wrenching pain…and then the burn, the itch that was a thousand times worse than the time he’d accidentally fallen into a Fire Ant nest as a boy, as the nanites had begun to pull him back together. And the sickening tearing, as Moira had stolen parts of him that moment to test, catching the nanites in various stages of healing and bearing them away, leaving him with holes in himself. Screaming and pleading for her to return them, the words falling unbidden and with a desperation that he couldn’t silence, but mercifully she never listened to him.

Slices of him were taken. Skin cut away with precision, while she would lean in to watch the nanites work to heal the damage. A little slower with each new wound that was inflicted. Then she would cut him again, deeper, longer…and then came the experimental injections, the burning liquid that had torn him apart before, applied to each cut in turn. A sting. A burn. A sizzling, crackling sensation that wormed its way into the wounds, seeping so far inside him that he almost hoped that it would burn its way through him, and release him from this hell.

It never did.

He burned. He convulsed under the force of it, his body being ripped apart from the inside and outside, until he was something less than human. _No, he had been less than human before. A monster that couldn’t die twisted and rebuilt in Reaper’s image,_ that was why he was doing this. Why he let Moira toy with him like a cat with a mouse in its grip, enduring as she pushed his body closer and closer to the edge that whispered tantalising of relief and freedom from this existence but never managing to send him tumbling to the oblivion he sought.

In fact, he wasn’t even granted the peace of unconsciousness. There were times when he succumbed, half-human, half mist, splintering down the middle, blood and vomit, and worse pooling in the seat with no physical body to stop it. But, then the nanites would pull him back, forcing him to endure their shrieks as they fought to survive, not for him – it was never for him, he had realised that long ago – but for their own sake, and for Reaper, who he could feel them calling out for in brief moments of lucidity. Or, on the rare occasions where the world dared to fade to grey murk, he would find Moira looming over him, forcing him back to consciousness with sharp words and sharper nails as she slapped his cheeks, or through the burn of fresh chemicals being forced into his failing body. Undone and failing, but not dying, never dying.

*

In the beginning, he had asked questions, or tried, a desperate attempt to hold back the shouts and screams of agony and to find an anchor in the real world. But, the answers he’d received had either been short and sharp, or full of language that he couldn’t understand even when he was at his best, let alone when his body was being taken apart. But as the days…was it days? Or had it been weeks? Or months? The words faded away, broken along with his voice, as he shrieked and howled, unable to hold onto anything but the reason that he was doing. The reason he was welcoming this agony, writhing, swirling as he became mist, then solid and then something in between, only distantly aware of Moira’s delighted voice, her laughter as she marvelled at the monstrosity he was, even the sting of those words when they broke through his hazy thoughts nothing to what his body was enduring.

Then his mind began to wander.

_ Dust and rock were settling around him when his eyes snapped open, and when he’d opened his mouth to suck in a desperate breath, he’d found himself coughing. Choking, until he thought that he might never catch his breath, a fire igniting in his chest, that paled in comparison to the awful, rippling sensation across his face. He must’ve passed out again, because when he woke again, the world was silent and the burning in his chest had faded to dull embers that threatened to come to life again as he stirred, trying to take stock of where he was and what had happened._

_“Ga…” His attempt to call out, to seize onto the one clear memory he had – of Gabriel glaring at him across the room, about the only way he ever looked at him these days – ending with a gargled cry, as the rippling sensation in his face became a tearing, his stomach lurching as he moved clumsy fingers towards it, feeling the way the skin moved and split beneath his touch._

His face was on fire now, the skin rippling and bubbling, the nanites bursting out through the skin and tearing it apart in a way he had never experienced before and he arched up off the chair, half expecting to find the rubble of Zurich laid out around him. Instead, his movement was halted by the straps around his chest and limbs, leaving him nowhere to go, as the sensation spread, covering his entire face and creeping down the side of his neck. His heartbeat a drumbeat in his head, almost loud enough to drown out the awful, grating noise that he slowly realised was a scream…his scream…which faded, as a hand settled over his mouth, a new kind of agony as it pressed against ruined flesh.

“We’re getting closer…” Moira’s voice drifted to him, as though she was miles away, rather than standing above him, triumphant in the face of his agony, and he seized hold of those words and the promise in them, before letting his mind drift again.

_ He was eighteen, his bag packed and ready by the doorstep as he had to leave early the next morning. Dinner that night had been tense. The Morrisons weren’t happy about their youngest child going off to war, but nothing they had said had swayed Jack from his decision, and so they ate in silence, none of them ready to say goodbye. Jack had missed the usual chatter, even if he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life on the family farm, it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to miss it, but he had no idea how to bridge the distance between them. Instead, he tried to focus on everything, memorising it, knowing that he would need it in the weeks and months to come – the taste of his mother’s food (the best in the world, unless she was trying to bake which always ended as a disaster), the familiar smells of the farm drifting in through the open back door, his father’s weathered features slowly relaxing after a long day in the field, his brother carefully pushing the beans to the edge of the plate, and the empty places set for the Morrison siblings that weren’t there._

_Home._

_ The one constant he’d always had, that he was about to leave behind. Possibly forever if things went wrong, and his throat tightened, as for the first time, he really let himself contemplate what that could mean. Perhaps something had shown in his expression, or maybe his father had just been waiting to talk to him, but he was jolted out of the sudden downturn in his thoughts, by his father clearing his throat and looking across at him. “Let’s go for a walk, Jack.”_

_“But the dishes…” All the Morrison kids had learned not to try and slip away without helping to clear up, but tonight his mother just offered him a watery smile, before informing him that John would do it tonight in a tone that brooked no argument from his brother, and not sure what else to do he had followed his father outside._

_ He’d walked this way a thousand times or more, in all kinds of weather, but it felt like the first and last time as he followed his father down past the main barn and down towards the pond where they’d spent so many summer afternoons. “Jack…” He sighed, waiting for the protests to start again, but when he looked up, his father just looked resigned. “I wish that we could talk you out of this, but you’re a Morrison through and through, and it would be like talking to a brick wall.” Jack hadn’t been able to stop himself from snorting at that, thinking about all the times that his mother had bemoaned how stubborn Morrison men were, and he saw his father’s lips twitch before he turned serious once more. “I also wish that I could make you promise to stay safe and come back to us, but this is War Jack, and even if you come back to us, you’ll be different.”_

_“I…”_

_“You can’t stop that from happening Jack,” his father cut across him, closing the distance between them and grasping Jack’s shoulders. “Just promise me that you won’t change too much that you’ll never become like the monsters you’re going to fight.”_

_“I promise…”_

Where those tears on his cheeks? No, it was thicker and warmer, trickling across ruined skin as he blinked. Blood. His heart aching, a duller counterpart to the other pains. _I promise…_ It was another broken promise, and he was glad that his parents had never had chance to see him like this, better that they thought he’d died as a failed hero in Zurich, than ever learning what he had become.

_But soon I’ll be free…._

**

He almost begged for her to stop when she turned her attention inwards. He’d endured more than he had ever thought possible because there had been no lie in her words. She had broken him over and over until he was no longer sure that he would ever be put together in the right way ever again. The pain was continual now. Each breath igniting wounds that had healed, his body no longer able to forget those wounds, even as a sicking, burning spread through those that were still struggling to knit themselves back together, his nanites slower than they had been, although they stubbornly kept him clinging to life when a human would have already died several times over. Hell, even the Jack Morrison who had gone through SEP would have been gone by now, but not him, not this broken, monstrosity that clung to that old name, and the memories of a life that was no longer his. He endured.

And then Moira went for his organs.

It wasn’t the first time, he’d endured the horrifying sensation of someone probing around inside him, remembering the feathery touch that had sent his nanites into a spiral on that first day a lifetime ago, or the times that Reaper’s nanites had seeped into his body. This was different. He could feel every inch of it, every tear and shift in parts of his body that should never have been exposed to human contact apart from on the operating theatre, and certainly not while he was conscious. But even now he wasn’t granted that reprieve, and his voice was trapped behind a gasp that had frozen in place, his skin half mist now as he stared in a sort of frozen, disbelief as her fingers pressed deeper into his chest. Then he felt it, the flutter of his straining heart against the hardness that had to be her nails, and his entire body seized. _Don’t. Please. Please stop._ The pleas flashed through his mind, a desperate scream that he couldn’t give voice to, as everything narrowed down to the sensation of her fingers brushing against his heart.

There was a moment where everything seemed to stop. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move for fear of what would happen. He wanted to die, but not like this. Even his nanites, half-solid and half-mist seemed locked in place, and it took him a moment to realise that they were afraid, quivering and shivering beneath his pallid, feverish flesh until he thought that he might shake apart from it. “T-They…” He managed to force out, trying not to focus on the way that his voice seemed to vibrate through his chest, pressing him further onto her fingers. _I should be dead, this shouldn’t be happening._ His mind was coming apart, the horror of it, finally breaking through his resolve, but he could still feel their fear especially when Moira glanced at his face, before shifting her fingers, and Jack jerked almost sick at the sensation. But the nanites were panicking, trying to swarm closer but not daring to get too close, and the hope…the promise of a possible release from this existence where he could endure this gave him the strength to find his voice. “T-they’re t-terrified.”

It was the first time he’d spoken in forever, and he didn’t recognise his own voice or the emotions swirling in it, to numb, to broken by everything. Just that one constant, that one goal keeping him focused, and locked in place as Moira’s fingers curled around his heart, a viper waiting to wrap itself around its prey. _Is this how I die?_ There was no fear, not of that anyway, in fact, he was practically giddy at the thought of it, especially as Moira’s expression had turned thoughtful, so different from her usual excitement or triumphant that he almost let himself hope. “The heart?” She murmured, more to herself than to him, but Jack nodded, stomach-lurching as the movement shifted the hold, she had on him, bile rising in his throat as he was reminded of the horror of the situation. Then Moira was laughing, the sound so at odds with everything that Jack could only stare at her uncomprehendingly. “The heart…how very human of you Strike Commander,” she said eventually as she got herself under control, turning to look at him. “And how ironic,” she added, before he could even think of a response, and something tore and twisted, and ruptured in his chest as her hand closed.

And Jack wailed…

****

For the first time in forever, Jack found himself clawing his way back to consciousness, pain settling over him like a second skin as he did so. And with it came the sickening memory of fingers in his chest, wrapping themselves around his heart. Twisting. Pulling. He choked on bile at the memory, the sensation so vivid in his mind that when he looked down, he half expected to find his chest still torn open, and Moira there laughing at him. Instead, he blinked to discover that she wasn’t there, and his upper body was in the process of knitting itself back together. The same couldn’t be said about the rest of him, as whatever she had done to him, whatever had shifted and broken in his chest had clearly had a domino effect, because he wasn’t even mist this time. Instead, his legs and part of his lower torso were a writhing mass of black ooze, and it took him a moment to realise it was the nanites…his nanites…and that while they were slowly creeping towards each other, swelling by the second, they seemed lost. Adrift. As though they no longer knew how to return to his body.

“It’s curious isn’t it,” Moira’s voice cut through his shock, and he lifted his head, or rather tilted it up, too weak to lift it completely…and yet still alive, he thought bitterly, remembering the hope that had gripped him far too briefly. Blinking at her in confusion, not trusting himself to speak even if he could get his voice to work, which he doubted at the moment. “Such wonderful developments,” she gestured at the mass of nanites, and Jack’s lip curled. _Wonderful?_ He wondered if she would feel the same way if this was her body, before realising that he wouldn’t wish this on anyone. Well, anyone apart from Reaper he thought, ignoring the small voice that laughed, knowing that was a lie, taunting him with a memory of Gabriel grinning as he pulled him into for a kiss. “And yet, they still have the same human weakness that most people have. The heart.”

Jack shuddered as she said the last word, knowing that if this failed, he would never forget how it had felt to have her hand around his heart. “Those nanites can do everything. Even keep you alive, when you are torn to pieces. They could even repair damage done to your brain, although how far that could go is still to be tested? But the heart? They need that, just as you need it to stay alive.”

“W-what…?” _What are you saying?_ He couldn’t finish the question, but it was enough because Moira was smiling and lifting something for him to see, and his heart quickened – a sickening sensation now he realised, but pushed aside, as he stared at the vial she was holding. Its contents glowed a sickly imitation of biotic light, and in its depths swirled something dark and sinister, the promise of something, but he couldn’t let himself hope again.

“All those efforts to tear you apart were pointless.” He wasn’t sure if she was referring to the scientists she had scorned before, or her own efforts, deciding he didn’t want to know. Not wanting to think about the last, however long it had been, the memory of it etched into his body or what currently remained of it, and instead twitching his hand in a gesture for her to continue. “You could be ripped to shreds and scattered across the world, and your nanites would eventually seep back together. But the heart, the core, if that is destroyed, there is nothing for them to gather around and…”

_ I can die,_ Jack thought, realising what she hadn’t said and for a moment he was lost. He had dreamt of it more times than he cared to count, prayed for it as he had never prayed for anything since SEP had shown him that humans could do worse to him than any divine power, and now that it was within his grasp it felt like he had stepped into a dream. Slowly he shook his head, taking a deep breath, and feeling the ache of his heart pounding in his chest. His weakness. It had always been his weakness, leaving a trail of loss and destruction in his wake, and it was strangely fitting that it would be the thing to destroy him too, and his hand was remarkably steady as he held out his hand for the vial. “P-please…”

He wasn’t sure what he had noticed first, the shift in Moira’s expression from triumphant to mocking as her fingers closed around the vial, pulling it away from him, or the darkening shadows at the edge of the room. However, there was mistaking the haunting, and painfully familiar laughter that spread through the room, and Jack felt as though someone had just ripped out his heart and stomach all at once, as heavy boots hit the ground as Reaper emerged from the shadows. “Hello, Jack.” It wasn’t a pleasant greeting, the raspy voice a low growl that held the promise of pain, and even after everything he had endured in this room, Jack shrank away from it, shaking his head in denial.

_This can’t be happening. Not now. Not when I am so close._

“Did you think that I didn’t know what you were up to, Jackie?” Reaper purred, stepping past Moira and looming over Jack, looking almost fascinated as he watched Jack’s body struggling to knit itself back together, nanites oozing around in a confused mass, some of it dripping off the side of the bed. Jack tried to pull away, flinching back, unable to forget that this man could hurt him more than Moira had in all the days of endless torture. Crimson eyes flashed at the movement, and then there were clawed fingers pressing into the wiggling mass of nanites and Jack went rigid, howling, as Reaper tore through the nanites, the sickening pain washing over him even in their separate state, and he almost missed the hissed words that followed. “That I would let you slip away without me?” Reaper’s hand was pressing deeper, reaching further and further into the nanites that were and weren’t Jack, the ones that belonged to him, responding to his fury and burning with it. It was agony, and yet Jack was frozen in horror, staring at the man he had once loved.

_He knew…?_

Slowly, feeling undone in more than the physical sense, he turned his gaze to Moira who was stood watching them, and as she met his dazed gaze, her lips lifted in a smirk. She’d known…she’d told him? No, she’d helped him because it was what Reaper had wanted, he realised belatedly, gaze slipping to the vial that she was still twirling between her fingers. The promise of release so close, and yet further than ever with Reaper stood between them. The hand inside him twisted, and Jack arched up with a hoarse cry, tasting copper as he caught his tongue. “Answer me,” Reaper snarled, and there was mist rising around him too now, his control wavering in his rage and Jack howled, as their nanites brushed for a moment, his leaning towards Reaper, tearing him even further apart.

“B-B-Bastard…” He managed to force out, spitting blood at Reaper an empty act of defiance. _I was a fool. _He had always been a fool when it came to Gabriel, it was why the other man had always been two steps ahead of him, always knowing him better than he knew himself, and as a clawed hand flashed out, leaving gashes across his face, he started to laugh, then keen and finally sob. Because it had all been for nothing. He was broken, twisted, his body not knowing how to put itself back together, but not dying, not close enough to edge, and Reaper had known all along. “W-why…?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking, glancing at Moira, who lifted an eyebrow.

“Surely you didn’t expect my memory to be that short, Strike Commander…” It was said with such vitriol that Jack couldn’t help but recoil. _I knew…_ He’d known, and yet still he’d let himself trust. Let himself hope. _So naïve, Jackie…_ Moira straightened and stepped forward holding out the vial to Reaper, and Jack was helpless to stop it, his nanites in disarray, his heart and mind breaking as the other man reached out and took it, studying it for a moment.

“You’re sure?”

“Look at him,” she tilted her head at Jack. “One step further, and he would have been gone.” That broke him more than anything else, hammering home just how close he had been, and he couldn’t stop the tiny, heartbroken noise that slipped out as Reaper pocketed the vial. Moira glanced at him once, mismatched eyes surveying her work before she looked at Reaper. “I trust you can clean up here?” A sharp nod as he turned his attention back to Jack, saw her shaking her head before walking away, but not without a brief pause as she waved at him. “It was good to see you again, Strike Commander, and you have done wonders for the research you dismissed back then.” The words hit home, as did the sound of the doors closing behind her, but Jack couldn’t tear his gaze away from Reaper who had finally pulled away from him, and was stood just staring at him, his thoughts hidden behind that cursed mask.

“So…what now?” He whispered. Reaper stared at him for a moment longer before turning away, and Jack jolted forward, reaching out without thinking, only to be brought up short by the straps holding him in place and the state of his lower body. “Reaper! Please…” The plea slipped out unintentionally, and he had already winced, even before the other man had whipped around with a low snarl, closing the distance between them in three quick steps and seizing Jack around the neck and pulling him up as much as he could. Jack crying out, realising that the damage was more extensive than he’d thought, but he made no effort to pull free, realising that everything he was and wanted now lay in Reaper’s hands.

“You tried to leave me behind Jack,” Reaper snarled, inches away from his face. Then the bone mask melted away, and Jack had a fleeting glimpse of ruined features and burning crimson eyes before he was pulled into a kiss. There was nothing gentle about the kiss. It was rough and bruising, another pain in the multitude across Jack’s broken body. But it wasn’t meant to comfort. It was meant to burn and hurt, to remind him of what they’d been, and what they’d become, and yet he still pressed into it, chasing the ghost of Gabriel, unable to stop himself whimpering when Reaper pulled back. “Now…” Claws brushed against the cheek they’d torn open not long before, the wounds had not even started to heal given the state of his nanites, the sharp pain making him quiver. “Now, you get to watch me do the same to you.”

“W-What…?” The claws became mist, as Reaper dissolved with a harsh bark of laughter, before he swept away into the shadows, taking with it Jack’s only hope of freedom. “N-no. Reaper?” There was no answer, nothing but the painful, swirling mass of nanites beneath him and the haunting, echoing silence around him. “REAPER! REAPER!” He was screaming now, the words tearing themselves from a ruined throat as terror gripped him, as the full meaning of those final words began to sink in. _He won’t leave me behind. I’m his. _

_I’m his…_

“REAAAAAPER!”

_Please…Please don’t do this…Please don’t leave me like this._


	4. Fear

Two months.

It had been two months, one week and two days since Jack had watched Reaper walk away from, taking with him his only hope for a release from the existence that the other man had forced on him. By the time he had managed to pull his body together enough to move, it was to find that Moira was long gone, along with any notes or anything that he could have used about what she’d discovered. He had barely been able to move, crawling across the room, and searching through every nook and cranny with hands that shook worse than they had in the aftermath in Zurich. How naïve could he have been? He’d known what Moira was like, and how far she was willing to go to find the answers she wanted, and he’d just lain there and allowed her to break him down into little pieces. And for what? So, she could hand it all over to Reaper? The laugh rising in the back of his throat, more than a little hysterical as he smashed a fist through the glass door of one of the cupboards.

He’d barely felt the pain of the glass slicing into his hand, not that there was much skin left to be broken, his nanites still scarcely able to give him form. Yet, it was the feel of them buzzing to life, trying to repair the fresh damage that pushed him over the edge, because even now, when he was something less than human. Less than solid.

He couldn’t die.

The first sound was a grim mockery of a laugh, a harsh bark that echoed around the room, then it broke. Somewhere between a groan and a sob, an eerie, haunting wail that bubbled up in the back of his throat and spilt out. At first, he tried to hold it back. Some last spark of pride – an echo of the soldier that he had been – rearing its head, but there wasn’t enough of that man left anymore, and there was no one here to watch him come apart. No one to see the depths of his weakness and Jack curled in on himself on the floor of the lab, more mist than flesh, and howled his grief, his pain and fear to the empty room.

_Please, Reaper… don’t leave me like this._

*

At some point, Jack had managed to pull himself together if you could even call it that. His body a ruined patchwork, the nanites struggling to deal with the full extent of what Moira had done to him. He didn’t care. Numb to the pain, to the unevenness of his gate, and the way that parts of him would split away without warning. Whatever Moira had done to him, it wasn’t fading, and it wasn’t killing him. He spent the first week hiding in the lab, unable to even consider facing the world yet, and combing through what little had been left behind in the hopes that he would find something. Anything. Even going so far as to down the liquid the few vials that she had left behind, embracing the fresh agony that tore through his body, letting himself come undone again and again, just to chase that fleeting moment of nothingness.

Yet every time his body fix itself, stitching itself back together from the ground up. Rooting him to life, and each time something broke a little more, and by the time he realised that he wasn’t going to find anything else here, forcing himself back into the open, he was less than a ghost.

And all that he had to cling to was that the fact that Reaper had once promised that they would go together, and the hope that somewhere deep-down Gabriel would stop the monster in him from breaking his word.

**

Two months.

Two months of searching through everywhere that he could think of. Old haunts – Overwatch and Blackwatch – all the safe houses and fail-safes that they had both tried to pretend that Gabriel didn’t have and that Jack didn’t know about. Even the few places that had still held memories of what they had once been – the base where they had first met and where SEP had been born, including the room they had shared as their bodies had fallen apart for the first time. Hell, he’d even gone to check on Gabriel’s family, figuring that if Reaper were trying to end things then maybe he would want to say farewell to the life he’d had if he even had enough humanity left to think about that. It hurt to see them, to see the grief that losing Gabriel had inflicted on a family who had once upon a time taken Jack to their hearts. He didn’t approach them now, watching from a distance even as he hoped for the distinctive dark smoke to put in an appearance.

Nothing.

It had been like taking a walk through someone else’s life. He didn’t know them anymore, and the thought of them seeing him and what he had become. What their son had done to him. It had broken his heart in a way that he hadn’t thought possible, and as much as it had hurt, it had given a brief spark of hope that some part of him was still human. That he could still care. Even as he hated the fact that it was still about Gabriel.

That it was always going to be about Gabriel.

He’d half expected to feel a smugness radiate through his nanites at that realisation. Had hoped for it, because it would mean that Reaper was close. But there was nothing, not even a quivering beneath his skin, and he’d fled then. Fled from the hopes that cut deeper each time they were dashed, from the memories, from the life that he could never go back to. That the man who’d once promised him the world had taken from him. That had been the deal. Gabriel would save the world, Jack would rebuild it. Now, look at them.

He’d tried to stay away from anything personal after that, but it was impossible. Everything about this was personal. What Reaper had done to him. What he had done to Gabriel.

What they were doing to one another.

So, he’d turned to anger. It was easier that way. It was how he had survived after Zurich – because he certainly hadn’t been living, even if he had been more alive than whatever the hell he was now. Only that anger had been focused. Honed to a fine edge that he could use against his enemies. This anger burned hot and bright, incandescent against the fear that gnawed at him in his quiet moments. The doubts that whispered in his ear late at night, the voices that mocked him, telling him that it was too late. That Reaper was gone. That despite everything he had said to Jack, he had left him behind.

_He wouldn’t._

_He couldn’t._

_He…_

It became a mantra, a desperate prayer that he whispered through bloody lips, as he tore through informant after informant, ripping apart his entire information network all in the hopes of finding some clue as to where Reaper had gone. If he got to punch out some of his frustration – and worse – then that was a benefit, and the small part of him that baulked at what he was doing, whispered that he was clearing up the world. One last act of mercy for the world that had turned on him, before all of this ended. Yet, for all his efforts, the skin on his knuckles scarring over as his nanites gave up their efforts to keep the torn skin healed, he found nothing. No deaths that could be tied to Reaper. No whispers of him in the field, even though Talon were still operating. Nothing. It was like he was chasing a ghost.

No, it was like Reaper was gone.

****

“Where is he Sombra?” Jack snarled, pacing back and forth across the small apartment, was his current, temporary home. The encrypted communicator that the hacker had provided him with months ago pressed to his ear.

“That’s valuable information…” He snarled. He’d never had much patience for her games, but he had always tolerated it before because it was easier than arguing with her as he had quickly learnt that she could run circles around him. Today he didn’t have the patience, and he was at the end of his tether. “Fine. Fine. Honestly, Jack, you’re getting more and more like him….”

“Don’t. Fucking. Say. That.” Jack spat. Some part of him realised that she hadn’t meant anything about it. He had been careful never to let her know what Reaper had done to him. Still, the comparison was too much right now, especially as she knew who they were – or rather who they had been – having clocked Gabriel a long time ago and catching Jack out after he’d stumbled into one of her hideouts severely wounded after a mission on her info had gone horrendously wrong. There was a moment of silence, and it dawned on him that it was the first time he had ever spoken to her in that tone, and he sighed. “Sombra, I need to find him.” It was as close to an apology and a plea as he would allow himself at the moment, any more and he would come undone because then he really would have to consider how similar to Reaper he had become.

“We’ve been over this, I don’t know where he is.”

“Sombra…”

“He dropped over the radar a couple of months ago. I had him entering an old Talon base, but since then nothing,” Sombra replied, and he could hear her typing away, wincing at the mention of the base. His skin crawling at the memory of what had happened there. _It won’t be without cost, though._ “Talon are searching for him too, they believe he’s betrayed them…” There was a question in her words. It would have been so easy to say ‘yes’ to tell her that Gabriel had betrayed them, to use Talon to track him down, but the words wouldn’t come, because deep down he knew the truth. Because if Sombra couldn’t find him, then…

Reaper was gone.

Gabriel was gone…

And Jack was doomed…

Sombra was still speaking, but he couldn’t hear the words as a roaring filled his ears. _Reaper is gone. He left me. He left me…_ He was falling. Physically – his knees giving way beneath him, the communicator going flying as he braced himself at the last moment, head bowed as he began to quiver and shake from the ground up. _He’s gone. _He was splintering mentally too, splitting open along the cracks that Reaper had created the moment he had turned Jack into this. Along the fault lines that had formed under Moira’s ministrations, and had deepened day by day as he had searched for Reaper.

Until he shattered.


End file.
